Mimi Kagan

Kagan trained for dance under Hanya Holm, one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance.[1][2] She later became part of the Hanya Holm Dance Company.[1][2][3] Kagan danced in Trend (1938), Holm's first United States performance.[4] Other dancers in the Holm company included Louise Kloepper, and Henrietta Greenhood (later known as Eve Gentry).[5]

Kagan served as the dance director at Henry Street Settlement Playhouse (now Abrons Arts Center) in New York City.[6]

She later moved to Berkeley, California and worked as a co-director of Dance Associates; and she founded her own company the Mimi Kagan Dance Group; and in 1947 also worked under the name the San Francisco Dance League alongside Anna Halprin.[6][7] She received an award from the San Francisco Arts Commission for dance presentation.[6] Kagan also taught dance at the California Labor School in San Francisco.[8]

In 1957, the Mimi Kagan Dance Group was named as a "Communist group" by Herbert Philbrick.[9] In 1961, the House Un-American Activities Committee had targeted and blacklisted the Mimi Kagan Dance Group as a "subversive organization", which was part of a list published in national newspapers.[10]

In 1971 and 1972, she collaborated with her second husband composer Earl Kim on the work "Exercises en Route", which toured and featured text by Samuel Beckett, and soprano soloist Benita Valente.[11] The show contained Kagan dancing and four other dancers from Boston Ballet including Anamarie Sarazin, Eileen O'Reilly, Robert Steele, and Anthony Williams.[11] In 1970s, Kagan was a dance correspondent for The Boston Globe daily newspaper.[12]

Kagan died in 1999 in Oakland, California, and is buried at the Mountain View Cemetery. Her students had included Murray Louis,[13] and she designed choreography for Adrienne Hawkins.[14]

• 
  with Ted Odza (c. 1940)
• 
  Mimi Kagan Dance Group
• 
  with Earl Kim (c. 1966)
• 
  Dancers in "Exercises en Route" (c. 1970)